


We Should Have Met in Finavir

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-25
Updated: 2007-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did you find what you were seeking?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Should Have Met in Finavir

**Author's Note:**

> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). Please remember to check individual fanfic ratings before reading. None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works.

She was afraid of water. It was nearly unnatural the way it scared her, closing her chest and filling her lungs with terror. The old women made the sign to ward off evil when she passed and she ignored them, letting their hatred flow over her the way she believed water would, covering her head and dragging her down until she found peace.

"Crones," her brother said, far too loudly, and she stifled her laughter in her apron. "They do that because you aren't like them. You aren't dead yet."

He meant that she hadn't accepted life in this town as her due and hadn't agreed to marry. Marriage scared her as much as water, the thought of a ring heavy on her finger making her feel as if she could no longer breathe. "I fear too many things," she said.

"Like what?"

"Leaving you." She smiled and cuffed his arm to disguise how real that fear was. Her brother was light and laughter and she couldn't bear to leave him. If she did the shadows would claim him and he would never smile again, so she lived in the shadows herself, letting them fill her so he could grow in the sun. You take too many burdens upon yourself, her father told her often, and she nodded knowing she could never do less.

* * *

It was her brother who drove her to the sea, her foolish brother drawn by the stories told by a madman's son, of how his father could dive deeper and stay longer in the ocean than any other man. Her brother who would let no challenge pass, not even one not hidden in the proud boasting of a son about his father. Her brother, too, loved to boast of his father, so he should have seen the lies in the words, for surely no man would dare the treacherous sea beyond their harbor.

She was, of course, too late. Her brother waved his arms and called her name, strutting proudly through the waves. "Idiot," she cursed, then smiled, for surely her brother was blessed in all things.

"You shouldn't worry. Your man will be safe with my father."

"My brother," she said. Then, "your father is a fool."

"Yes," he acknowledged. "But the sea calls him and he answers."

"The sea calls only death to me." She stared out over the waves and watched their heads vanish beneath the water. "Does it call to you?"

"Only my father calls to me." He laughed. "My father and a good ale, and someday a beautiful wife and fat babies. But today all my father has is me, so here I am, until he finds what he is searching for."

She wanted to ask what that could be, the thing that called a man from hearth and home by its lack, but she knew nothing good could come of the sea and so she pitied him, this unknown man and his son so full of promise. Then she pitied herself the fear that would forever keep her from seeking out anything but what she already possessed.

Of a sudden, the sea called to her, its waves a voice raised in song, and her goal that man who sought so hard for the unknown and carried her brother with him. She kicked off her shoes and left them lying in the sand next to the searcher's son. "I cannot swim," she remarked as she ran toward the horizon.

He called out for her to stop but she couldn't. There was something there, in the ocean, something that was not her death but was change just the same. The water was cold about her legs, colder still about her abdomen and she thought, as the waves closed over her head, that this was not so painful after all.

* * *

"Stupid girl." Someone pounded on her chest and breathed into her mouth. "Stupid, stupid girl."

She spat saltwater and struggled against the hands holding her down. "I'm not dead," she said. The thought pleased her so she said it again though it hurt her throat to force the words out. "I'm not dead."

"You should be."

She blinked her eyes opened and looked at him, really looked, at this man who had pulled her from the sea. "Did you find what you were seeking?"

He tightened his arms around her. He had always believed he would know his heart's desire when he pulled it from the sea's cold grasp. "Yes," he said. "I think I have."


End file.
